The Monster Doodle Book Jump-Starts Your Kid’s Imagination

With the approach of summer vacation, it’s a good idea to stock up on things for your kids to do — and I mean things other than sitting in front of the TV with a controller. Of course, there’s always going outside to run around, and Jim Kelly’s “activity closet” is also an excellent suggestion. Here’s one more to add to your kit: The Monster Doodle Book by Travis Nichols.

It’s akin to the Adventures in Cartooning book that I wrote about last summer, but instead of panel-based comic strips the focus is on drawing silly beasts. Each page has some unfinished doodles, some with instructions and some without, and your kid gets to fill in the rest. There’s a monster alphabet that spans several pages with some of the letters missing. The back of the book is a monster yearbook with little boxes for each “photo” and plenty of blank ones to fill in.

Some pages have just a face, some have body parts, some have various accessories — one page just has a kilt — and your kid (or you) supply the rest. If you’ve got kids who like doodling and monsters, The Monster Doodle Book is a fun volume that might distract them from screen time for a while.

Or if it doesn’t, then you’ll have something to entertain yourself while you’re on that boring phone call.